


We Sacred Few

by MI5WWII



Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Bisexual Bucky Barnes, Bottom Steve Rogers, First Time, Gay Steve Rogers, M/M, Modern Era, Oblivious Pining, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Top Bucky Barnes, World War II
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-06 07:39:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15881550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MI5WWII/pseuds/MI5WWII
Summary: In 1945 in the Austrian Alps, Steven Rogers catches Sergeant James Barnes before he can fall from a train on a mission to extract the German scientist, Zola. And so, it is not only Captain America who crashes a plane to save millions and is frozen beneath the ice.In the modern-era, it is Captain America, and Bucky Barnes who emerges into the 21st century, and who both must join the Avengers, and discover who they are,especially to each-other, in a modern world.





	We Sacred Few

**I**   
**Austria, February 1945**

  
Steve shoveled in mouthfuls of canned pork loaf from his K-ration. Even though he’d packed the rations in the bottom-back of his pack to keep them as protected as possible, he still chewed through partially frozen meat, from just how damn cold the air got at this kind of altitude in the Alps. The commandos all hunched over a small fire, huddled in the mouth of a cave in the cliff face of an Austrian Alp, waiting on the Schnellzug EB912 that carried Zola through the valley below at 0800 in just a few hours’ time.

Jones bitched between mouthfuls of his own rations over the inadequacy of the meal. The others chimed in with their own complaints and agreements, “This pork tastes like baby shit,” and, “who the fuck is this biscuit supposed to feed, my eighty-pound granny?” Steve kept his mouth shut to not rile the men up further, but he quietly agreed. The K-rations were a new development and came from the paratrooper division. Ever since the parachute boys made their entrance into the European theater at Normandy last June, high-command took to shoving the assault meals on the unit for their many sporadic and often unorthodox missions.

The rations hardly seemed enough for a regular G.I, but Steve’s super soldier metabolism left his stomach cold and empty even after a couple cans of pork loaf. Dernier side-eyed him and held out his rationed chocolate bar to Steve.

“A trade, your disgusting American chocolate, for a pack of fags, capitaine?” Dernier asked.

Steve smiled and fished his packet of cigarettes from his ration box to hand to Dernier. Until the serum, chronic asthma and reoccurring pneumonia kept him from ever developing a taste for them. And a taste or not, his metabolism made sure he didn’t feel the nicotine buzz in his veins that gave the rest of his men the stress relief they so desperately craved.

Dernier sniffed as he took the packet. “These American brands are not as good as Gauloises anyhow.”

Bucky stomped into the cave, brushing snow out of his hair and off the broad shoulders of his blue coat.

“Oh, I see how it is,” Bucky said. “I’m out there freezing my nut sack off to finish that cable and you’re in here going on about French janes.” Bucky kicked more snow off his boots and tromped to the fire to collapse between Steve and Dernier.

Dum Dum whooped. “Sarge you don’t need that anyhow.” Bucky grinned good naturedly while the others cat-called and whistled as he fished his rations out to pry a can open. Falsworth started up an argument with Jones, Dum Dum, and Dugan on the opposite side of the fire. Steve would be worried about their racket if they weren’t in bumfuck Austria with a blizzard raging outside to drown out the bitching and ribbing.

Steve leaned in towards Bucky, close enough that the white plumes of their exhales mingled in the air. “You’re not worried about that cable?” He asked.

Bucky kept his head ducked over his ration can while he forked in mouthfuls of half-frozen goop. “I keep telling ya,’ Steve, the train can’t be going that fast on those snow-covered rails. We’d have to fuck it up real bad to not stick a landing on it.” Steve nodded and ran the back of his hand across his mouth, the dry and cold cracked skin of his lips catching against his knuckles. Bucky cut him a sharp, sideways glance. “What has your hose all tied up anyway?”

Steve murmured, “Don’t know, just have a real bad feeling about this, Buck.”

Bucky grinned, white teeth glinting against firelight. “A whole unit flying down a cable in the snow, in the Alps, onto a moving Godamn train. Ain’t got a clue why you’re feeling nervous, pal.”

Steve laughed, and they sat in silence for a while, listening to Dernier join into the fireside argument over who would fuck a Kraut broad at this point.

“How do you think we’ll manage to hold off all them Brooklyn girls when we get back home?” Bucky asked.

Steve could never quite pin how he managed to feel mournful at the thought of life after the war. He lived in limbo, always waiting for the day that the Jerrys surrendered, so they could escape from the misery and death. There weren’t any upsides or positives to war, when you lived in the mud, soup, and blood. But Steve had something with the Howlies, and with Bucky he didn’t have before the war, a purpose and comradery for one. But with Bucky he dug his fingers in and held on tight to the bond of their friendship, their subconscious ability to work together as well as two oiled gears. He never liked sharing Bucky with others, especially no red mouthed, panty-hosed broads from Brooklyn.

“I dunno, Buck,” said Steve. “About as well as you’ve always managed.”

Bucky elbowed him. “Won’t be just me, pal. Two good lookin’ joes like us in uniform. You’re Captain America for fuck’s sake.”

Steve snorted a quiet laugh. “It’s hard to imagine beyond tomorrow, beyond the war. Those girls aren’t anything but a fog across the sea.” Bucky stretched out and laid his head against his pack. He closed his eyes and hummed in the back of his throat.

“Just dream about bouncin’ curls and soft tits, Stevie,” said Bucky.

Steve glanced at the copper light flickering auburn in Bucky’s dark, slicked back hair. Even in the dimness of the cave, he could see the deep bruises of exhaustion under Bucky’s eyes.

“I’ll dream about steak and ice-cream,” said Steve. “Just like I always do.”

Bucky grinned with his eyes closed, and within minutes fell into a shallow sleep. Steve barely drifted past the muddled partial consciousness of a light doze, until the first break of dawn pierced through the mouth of the cave. Sunlight refracted off fresh fallen snow and glistening icicles at the entrance, casting a rainbow across the ground so that stripes of red and yellow fell over his eyes. Steve sat and took a deep breath, the only sound to disturb the complete silence of the snow muffled morning.

Bucky stirred beside him, peeled open one tired eye and sat, cracking his neck as he did.

“Twenty-seven is too damn young for my bones to sound like this,” Bucky muttered. The others all groaned and griped as they woke to the smell of Steve making coffee; but were quick to cinch up their packs and tighten their bootlaces after a quick breakfast of cold rations, chased down by what Jones called “the nastiest fucking joe I’ve ever put in my damn mouth.”

They stood on the precipice of the cliff, with the distant sound of the train echoing in the valley. Steve glared against the sun and the nauseous turn of his stomach.

Bucky grinned at him and asked, “remember when I made you ride the Cyclone at Coney Island?”

Steve’s stomach only clenched harder at the memory. “Yeah, and I threw up?”

Bucky peered down at the chasm opening before their feet. “This isn’t payback is it?” He asked.

The dread kept a smile off his face, but he appreciated the mirth in Bucky’s eyes, even at a moment before they planned to hurl themselves off the mountain. Steve asked, “now why would I do that?”

The next two minutes passed in an adrenaline-fueled blur as Steve, Bucky, and Jones hurled down the zipline. The buffets of ice-cold air blasting in Steve’s face stole the air straight from his lungs, and he landed knees down on the train, gasping for air like he was fifteen and thinking he would die from an asthma attack all over again.

Bucky sprawled beside him and yelled above the blasting wind and thundering train, “Godamn how do those troopers do it?”

Inside a train compartment Steve narrowly forced Bucky behind his shield, bullets bouncing off the vibranium and filling the car with the explosive ringing of echoing gunshots.

Bucky gasped, “I had him on the ropes.”

Steve pivoted with his shield at the peripheral glimpse of a hydra goon. “I know you did.” The pair of them kicked and scrapped through more hydra goons, and Steve pivoted, shield up, at the sight of a primed and ready blaster. The next moment filled with the first millisecond of the blast before Steve’s ears went muffled from the noise. Half the blast clipped the edge of Steve’s shield, taking out the hydra goon with the reverberating shock. The train car filled with the roar of wind at the blasted-out hole in the wall, and Steve lunged through the cavity.

Bucky swung like a pendulum from the floor’s edge. His eyes and mouth gaped up in wide terror. Without thought Steve half threw himself out the blasted hole and grabbed Bucky’s arm just as he lost grip of his metal handhold. For one sick, icy moment, Bucky slipped, and Steve dug into skin with his nails as he screamed above the howling gales.

“Hold on, Buck!”

Bucky swung up his other arm to grasp Steve’s bicep, and Steve yelled as he pulled them both into the train car. He laid still for a moment, pulse thundering in his ears while Bucky heaved for breaths beside him.

“Jesus, Steve,” is all he said.

Steve closed his eyes and for the first time since he was seventeen and at his mother’s dying bedside, he prayed.

**One week later, London**

Steve leaned against the bar, waiting on the next round of beers for the Howlies, who all sat in a raucous heap at a corner table. The Andrew Sister’s sang on the radio, and the whole bar of G.Is and civilians alike were in a fair enough mood to start a riot, despite the bombed out street outside, and the air raid sirens going off only an hour before.

Bucky especially, seemed to be enjoying every waking breath of being alive. Steve watched from the sidelines as he swung another jane around and shimmied dangerously close to her for a semi-respectable public bar like this. The hem of her teal dress fluttered around her calves, and Steve noted, a little vindictively, that the drawn-on lines of her hose were crooked, and that her mouth looked too wide in her red lipstick. Bucky’s pomade-slicked down hair had progressively loosened through the night from all his dancing and sweating so that now a few errant swaths of hair flopped rakishly into his face. He looked quite the picture in his fresh pressed uniform, smile wide and eyes alight with none of the exhaustion or horror from the last week.

“I am very happy to see your men enjoying themselves.”

Steve glanced over to Agent Carter leaning against the bar beside him. “Sergeant Barnes looks especially lively tonight,” she said. “I was very happy to read your report.”

Steve’s throat seemed to close up. He swallowed thickly, choking down the terror and still clinging panic of almost losing Bucky. “I don’t have words for how relieved I am, ma’am,” he said.

Agent Carter appraised him for a moment before turning her attention back to the dance floor. “Indeed, there is no stronger bond than that of soldiers, especially between two men who were friends before the war.”

The word friends felt like such an underwhelming description when Steve thought of the paramount importance Bucky held in his life. “We didn’t just know each other before the war,” he said. “We grew up together, I love him like my brother.” The word fit wrong in Steve’s mouth, but then, any word Steve had to describe Bucky fit wrong. Friend, brother, compatriot, they lacked an element of ineffable, desperate devotion that Steve felt with every breath he took.

Agent Carter laughed, “Oh Steven, you poor thing.”

Steve cast her a confused expression. She smiled thinly for a moment and held her hand out to him. “Dance this song with me, darling, I have both good and bad news for you,” she said.

Steve took her hand with his own clammy one. She placed one gentle hand on his right shoulder and raised her eyebrows at him pityingly. “If you could avoid stomping my toes, that is all I ask.”

Steve ducked his head in embarrassment and they danced for a few silent minutes before Steve asked. “What’s this news you have for me?”

“HQ is sending you and your commandos to take down Schmidt at the Franco-Italian border,” she said.

Steve froze and narrowly missed stomping on one of Agent Carter’s narrow toed heels.

“Colonel Phillips successfully interrogated Zola then?” He asked.

She let go of Steve’s hand and smiled sadly up at him. “There in lies my bad news I’m afraid. I wanted to let you boys enjoy a couple celebration drinks, but you leave at 2200 hours. Colonel Phillips expects you for a briefing within the hour.” She stood up on the tips of her toes and Steve bent his head obediently for her to kiss his cheek. “I wish you all the best of luck, and God’s speed to bring those bastards down.”

Agent Carter left as quickly as she appeared. Steve pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed, as a feeling of soul deep exhaustion washed through him. Bucky suddenly appeared at his side and clapped him on the shoulder.

“Looks like you finally got a bombshell of a broad to dance with you, you ba-” Bucky cut himself off and frowned. “Did we get orders?” He asked.

“We’re going after Schmidt, 2200 hours,” Steve said.

Bucky nodded. “I’ll round up the boys to suit up.”

“Thanks, Buck.”

Bucky clapped him on the shoulder again, his attention already directed to the commandos at the corner table, body half turned away. He threw over his shoulder, almost absentmindedly, “till the end of the line, pal.”

**1300 Hours, Hydra Headquarters in the Franco-Italian Alps**

“Steve, pull me up!”

Steve kicked a hydra goon back and rolled to throw his arm out. Bucky ran below, chasing Schmidt’s plane, and he leapt to grab Steve’s outstretched arm. Like a mirror from the nightmare on the train, Bucky swung before pulling himself into the plane. While Bucky scrambled to his feet, Steve threw his shield and knocked out the last hydra goon that came stomping through the cargo hold of the plane.

“Steve, look at the bombs,” Bucky gasped, still trying to catch his breath.

Steve didn’t need to see them all to know, with New York labelled on the nearest to them. Neither one of them said another word as Steve took off for the cockpit with Bucky right on his heels. He burst through the cockpit’s security door only to face Schmidt once again.

Schmidt stood from the pilot’s chair and snarled. “You don’t give up, do you?”

Steve lunged for the left and Bucky the right as Schmidt rebuffed their defensive strikes. Schmidt’s fist caught Steve in the shoulder, and for the first time since the Serum poured fire in his veins, another’s physical blow brought him to his knees. His shield clattered away, and Steve grunted from the force.

Schmidt towered over him and threw his hands into the air as he exclaimed. “You could have the power of the gods. Yet you wear a flag on your chest and think you fight a battle of nations. I have seen the future, captain. There are no flags.”

The whistling of metal signaled Steve’s shield slicing through the air. Schmidt gagged out a choking noise as the shield caught him in the throat and threw him back into the console behind.  
Bucky huffed beside Steve. “Don’t know what kind of future you’re on about, pal, but I don’t want no fuckin part of it,” he spat.

The tesseract in the console behind Schmidt clattered to the floor from the collision. Schmidt grabbed the cube, and Steve gaped as he watched Schmidt scream and disappear into a void of blue light. The tesseract clattered back to the ground and quickly dissolved through the floor of the plane. Everything hung still for a moment before Bucky lunged for the controls. Steve followed him and they both read Ziel New York on the screen.

Steve looked at the gaping expanse of ocean through the window and felt his heart fall to his toes. “Buck, we have to ground this plane, we can’t let those bombs go off.”

Bucky ran his hand over the control panel lightly and sighed. “We both make it through this damn war and neither of us know how to diffuse a bomb or land a plane, ain’t fucking right.”

“Buck-” Steve started.

“Just sit-down Steve,” said Bucky. “We don’t have much ocean left.”

Steve collapsed in the copilot’s chair beside Bucky and looked at him. Bucky’s eyes swam with unshed tears and he held his mouth in a tight, straight line.

“You remember the first time you caught my paw beatin’ the shit out of me, Buck?” Asked Steve.

Bucky glanced up from the controls and looked into Steve’s eyes, tears swimming in his own. “Yeah,” he said. “You had to keep me from cuttin’ his throat with one of his own busted whiskey bottles.”  
Outside the window the great sea of blue began to run into white, as far as the eye could see. Steve placed his hands on the control wheel and began guiding the nose of the plane down.

“What did you tell me, Buck?” Steve choked out.

The plane shrieked and groaned at the speed of their descent, and Steve gulped as his ears popped with the altitude change. For a moment, Steve didn’t think he remembered, but then Bucky reached over and grabbed Steve’s hand and squeezed it with an iron grip between the two of their seats.

“I’m with you, till the end of the line,” said Bucky.

Open tears fell from Steve’s eyes as Bucky gripped his hand and the white of the world rushed towards them.

“And I’m with you, Bucky, till the end of the line,” said Steve.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a few historical notes from the chapter.  
> The k-rations the boys were eating were a very real World War II thing,and if you ever want to feel better about your life look them up.  
> Gauloises that Dernier refers to were a very popular brand of French cigarette during the war, that literally means Gaul woman.  
> The terms both Jerries and Krauts were used to refer to Germans by American soldiers.  
> The reference in the bar of the girl drawing on the lines of her hose is to vintage pantyhose from the era, which had a seam that ran down the back of the leg.During wartime,things like pantyhose were rationed or outright not produced so factories could be requisitioned to make wartime supplies.So women would draw the "seams" of pantyhose down the backs of their legs when they couldn't wear any.  
> Just another quick note,my use of language was a very deliberate choice since American GI's during the war were known for their profuse and violent swearing.Just a little tick that drives me crazy from pg13 movies that has a bunch of world war II vets talking like kids.


End file.
